Wooded Hillock site to be bulldozed

About nine of the 13 total acres of forest in the Wooded Hillock area of the campus behind the Comcast Center will be bulldozed as planned, possibly by the end of the year, university officials said, despite student protests and an SGA resolution asking the university to reconsider.

The area was designated to be the relocation site for university facilities displaced by the planned East Campus redevelopment on Route 1, but student activists have held speak-outs and protests against the decision, which Student Government Association Environmental Liaison Davey Rogner said was leaked to students by a faculty member in early February. Professors have also spoken out against the proposal, saying the wooded area is an invaluable teaching tool.

The decision to develop the hillock was made in 2007 by a committee of faculty and staff, a process critics have said lacked both transparency and student input. But Carlo Colella, the Facilities Management director of architecture, engineering and construction, contradicted a previous statement that asserted there was "no deliberate student involvement" and recalled that former SGA President Andrew Rose, who Colella said was was in office during the process, was on the committee that reviewed possible sites some time before the decision to develop was made.

Colella said the development is contingent on the East Campus plans being finalized, but he added the decision process is over and development will probably start later this year, regardless of student discontent.

Still, the activists aren't deterred by the administration's reaffirmation of the decision. Rogner said he e-mailed faculty members Saturday asking them to help defend the Hillock by writing short descriptions of how they could use the woods in their classes. He also said there are plans being made to lobby county officials that are overseeing the allocation of funds for the East Campus development.

"It really stinks that it's happening," Rogner said. "But it's not over 'til it's over."

Geography professor Stephen D. Prince was in the Hillock on Saturday with about 20 students, graduates and other faculty members on a tour put together by student activists. Prince said he takes classes out to the Hillock at least twice a semester to examine the area, which has both undisturbed woods and an area that was destroyed by the 2001 tornado but has started to regrow. Prince pointed out there are few other places to observe these natural conditions within close reach.

"You can't get very far down the road in an hour and a quarter. We can just walk here," Prince said. "I would take my students to this place if it were 50 miles away. It's not just that it's very convenient, it's very unusual."

Activists also say the Hillock is more than just a teaching tool: Faculty and students on Saturday's tour emphasized the unique conditions created by the Hillock's tornado-affected area.

Many students, though, don't see the Hillock as an effective use of the university's space.

"I went there for a bio class to study where the tornado went through," sophomore letters and sciences major Lauren Higgins said. "I don't think that land is helping the university, really - from a business standpoint, how much revenue will it bring in? From that standpoint, they should definitely [develop] it."

Sophomore letters and sciences major Tod Tanis said the situation is being blown out of proportion.

"Why is this so big?" Tanis said. "I've never had a class back there, I've never been back there, to be honest I didn't even know the woods were back there."

Sophomore pre-veterinary medicine major Destiny Coleman agreed.

"It's not like 'Oh, let me take this class so I can study something significant in the woods'," Coleman said. "It's just woods. People just smoke weed back there."

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